There are so many things that are misunderstood or not recognized about my father’s music because they’ve been filtered by people who work for magazines like Rolling Stone. For example, Rolling Stone recently printed a poor artist-rendering of Frank holding a joint. Frank has always been well-known for being anti-drug yet they would rather continue to perpetuate a false image of him, even after death, so they can mutate and manipulate their readers’ perception of him. It’s irresponsible, it’s obnoxious and offensive. I think it’s time people know what Frank was really about, and they should discover it through his music.

And…

Frank’s bands could play the hardest stuff and make it seem like no big deal. With Franks inclusion of certain themes, political ideas, or even having the “Secret Word of the Day” in the show, there was always an opportunity for the unexpected, musically and otherwise. You didn’t know what you were going to see. And that has not been part of anything I have seen recently in popular music or even really at the time when Frank was doing it. Modern bands, or shall I refer to them as “Artists,” perform their music with the intent to sound as close to their perfectly computer manipulated records as possible without deviation. They might as well be miming. In fact many are. One of my favorite quotes of Frank’s and I’ll paraphrase is, “Progress is not possible without deviation from the norm.” I would like to see more bands expand on the arrangements of some of their music and allow for some musicianship elements to generate excitement rather than dance moves or lasers.

For those small amount of you on the venn diagram who read me but don’t regularly read my Leahpeah, I point you to the latest update, with ultrasoundy goodness, on the gestational progress and situation.

Save a prayer for us all.

And what else? It’s been quite a few weeks. I’ve been sick quite a bit — first it was my gut – el vomito y more. This week it was la flema amarilla. Yucko. I hate being sick.

Finished up my contract in Ojai today. I liked Ojai. It sure did get hot there, but the place was real nice, and the people were real nice too. And hey, thirty years ago they filmed some car chases from Smokey and the Bandit there. I learned a great deal in dealing with my agency how I will do things differently next time that comes around, I mean, assuming it does. I also learned a bit about the markup attendant to my rate (77%, actually). Valuable intelligence, my friend. Knowledge is power.

When I was sick this week I did a pile of laundry, which still awaits its folding. Sad, that. Though clean unfolded clothes are preferable to unclean unfolded clothes.

BBEdit and Interarchy and Mac OS X have all updated in the past few months, and I’m behind the curve on all of them. Too much Windows-emphasis from me right now! Sad! I’ll catch up before Christmas.

Speaking of goals, dude, I want a bike. Bike before Christmas is a goal as well.

Oh, and fixing San Diego Bloggers, which, merde! is utterly broken and has been for over a month. Sorry charlie. My old bad code was prone to SQL injection attacks and it died. I feel pretty bad about it, but with how busy I’ve been it’s fallen by the wayside. Sorry to the folks out there. Check bloggernetwork.org. Leah’s working on that one.

On the organized religion front, I’m not very impressed by my Pope’s recent comments. I mean, it’s simply uncouth to point out the butchery done in the name of someone else’s religion. Probably better to be contrite about the bloodshed your own religion has caused. It hurts me to my heart. I quite like this acknowledgement from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”

On Monday I start a new job, and I’m looking forward to it.

There are other irons in the fire for me too, but for now, that’s enough.

The central insight here is that those killed by terrorists are NOT the intended targets. It’s us, the onlookers. The worriers. Every time the US bans some new fluid or gel, we let the terrorists win. That’s dumb. I’m sick of it. Read the whole essay.

On August 16, two men were escorted off a plane headed for Manchester, England, because some passengers thought they looked either Asian or Middle Eastern, might have been talking Arabic, wore leather jackets, and looked at their watches — and the passengers refused to fly with them on board. The men were questioned for several hours and then released.

On August 15, an entire airport terminal was evacuated because someone’s cosmetics triggered a false positive for explosives. The same day, a Muslim man was removed from an airplane in Denver for reciting prayers. The Transportation Security Administration decided that the flight crew overreacted, but he still had to spend the night in Denver before flying home the next day. The next day, a Port of Seattle terminal was evacuated because a couple of dogs gave a false alarm for explosives.

On August 19, a plane made an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida, after the crew became suspicious because two of the lavatory doors were locked. The plane was searched, but nothing was found. Meanwhile, a man who tampered with a bathroom smoke detector on a flight to San Antonio was cleared of terrorism, but only after having his house searched.

On August 16, a woman suffered a panic attack and became violent on a flight from London to Washington, so the plane was escorted to the Boston airport by fighter jets. “The woman was carrying hand cream and matches but was not a terrorist threat,” said the TSA spokesman after the incident.

And on August 18, a plane flying from London to Egypt made an emergency landing in Italy when someone found a bomb threat scrawled on an air sickness bag. Nothing was found on the plane, and no one knows how long the note was on board.

I’d like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets, or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want.

We’re all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since.

It’s been a month since this shot was taken. That was a pretty good trip. I never did say more about my Greyhound Bus trip, particularly the part where I was explaining to the nice bus driver how I lost my boarding pass while he himself was almost about to come to blows with another man boarding the bus. That’s a heckuva story, actually, if I ever get to it.

As it is, I do have a new job, and I do like it. It’s a bit of everything, especially UI work. But also some ASP, PHP, SQL Server, MySQL. And we’re migrating to Java/Oracle. Plus there’s occasional fires to put out, which is fun. And the hours are good. I’m so looking forward to it all.

It’s the magic hour now, very pretty sunrise today. Time to get started with the day.

The patient is feeling slightly better. Last night she was feverish, in pain, and honestly we were concerned that we might need to go to the Emergency Room. But as the night wore on, her fever dropped, and she’s feeling a bit better. She’s still bleeding some, but not copious. We’re watching her real close, and today she seems almost chipper. Last night she was looking as poorly as I’ve ever seen her. Pale, sweaty, feverish, weak, barely communicative. But her vital signs were okay, and as I said, her fever dropped. She even had some chicken noodle soup before the end of the night. When I got a text message today that she had had even more, I was so proud.

Honestly, everything has taken second stage with this miscarriage. But things are getting back to normal, I hope for good.

Thanks so much for all your thoughtful comments and emails. Your thoughts and wishes and prayers are most welcome and actively comforting.